By FDE Interview Prep, a SourceStrongAI company

In this post10 sections
  1. Why ‘I like customers and code’ is not enough
  2. What hiring leaders have said about this question
  3. Three weak answers, and why each breaks
  4. Build the answer on something you did
  5. The follow-ups, and how to answer each
  6. A rewrite, start to finish
  7. Practice it out loud
  8. Questions people ask
  9. Keep reading
  10. More from the blog

You say you want a forward deployed role because you like working with customers and you like writing code. The interviewer nods, writes nothing down, and asks: “When did you last do both in the same week?” To answer “why ?” well, give one thing you did where your code met a customer, what it taught you, and why an FDE role makes that work the job instead of the exception. Then stop, and let the follow-ups come back to your story. This question sits right on the line drawn in our guide to forward deployed engineer vs software engineer, which covers how the two jobs and their interviews differ.

Why ‘I like customers and code’ is not enough

It is probably true, and true of several other jobs. Product engineers talk to users and write code. Solutions engineers and sales engineers talk to customers and write some code. An answer that fits five jobs doesn’t tell the interviewer which of the five you are for.

It is a claim, so the next question asks for proof, and a candidate who prepared the slogan instead of the story starts improvising.

Palantir’s blog, in April 2019, drew the line in two phrases: a software engineer’s (“Dev”) focus is “one capability, many customers”, and a forward deployed engineer’s (“Delta”) is “one customer, many capabilities”. Source 1Dev versus Delta: Demystifying engineering roles at PalantirPublisherPalantir BlogSource typecompany blogSource 2A Day in the Life of a Palantir Forward Deployed Software EngineerPublisherPalantir BlogSource typecompany blog A good “why FDE?” answer shows which of those you want, with something you did.

What hiring leaders have said about this question

No employer publishes how it scores motivation, but a few hiring leaders have said what the question is for.

Put together, in our reading: the question routes you, the “closer to customers” reason is a good one, and the version that works is the one with your own evidence under it.

Three weak answers, and why each breaks

Each of these sounds fine for one sentence. Here is the push that breaks each one:

The weak answerThe follow-up that breaks it
Customers and code“Tell me about the last customer you worked with directly.”
Where AI is heading“If the title disappeared next year, what work would you still want to do?”
Closer to the business“Which part of the engineering do you expect someone else to do?”

The first weak answer: “I love working with customers, and I love writing code”

The follow-up: “Tell me about the last customer you worked with directly. What did you build for them?”

Why it breaks: it is a claim with no evidence, so the follow-up asks for the evidence. If your best example turns out to be a demo or a requirements meeting a PM ran, the answer now describes a different job.

The fix: lead with the evidence. Replace “I love working with customers” with the customer: who they were, what was wrong, what you built.

The second: “FDE is where AI is heading, and I want to be part of it”

The follow-up: “If the title disappeared next year, what work would you still want to do?”

Why it breaks: it explains why the market wants FDEs, not why you want the work or why you would be good at it. In our view it is the kind of “prepared statement of what you think we want to hear” that a Palantir hiring manager, speaking to software engineering candidates, told people not to give. Source 5From Code to Career: Meet Palantir's Hiring Managers (YouTube uploaded English captions)PublisherPalantir, YouTubeSource typerecorded talk or interview

The fix: swap the market for the work. Name the part of the work you have done and want more of.

The third: “I want to get closer to the business side”

The follow-up: “Which part of the engineering do you expect someone else to do?”

Why it breaks: it frames FDE as a step away from building. Anthropic’s FDE postings, for example, describe with customers to build production applications. Source 7Forward Deployed Engineer (New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA)PublisherAnthropic (Greenhouse job board)Source typecompany job posting An answer that sounds like leaving engineering makes the interviewer wonder whether you want the build half of the job, or whether a solutions role fits you better.

The fix: keep the business interest and attach the builder to it. “I want to own whether what I build changes how the customer works, and I want to be the one building it.”

Build the answer on something you did

The structure is ours, not an interviewer’s rubric. It has three parts and takes about a minute to say.

  1. The moment. One specific time your work met a customer. Who they were, their problem in their words, what you built, and one detail only the builder would know. This carries the whole answer.
  2. What it taught you. One sentence on where you do your best work. This is the bridge between the story and the reason, and most answers skip it.
  3. The link to this job. Why an FDE role makes that moment the job and not the exception, tied to one line of the posting in your own words, plus the cost you accept in one clause: travel (OpenAI’s FDE postings say up to 50% is required), Source 8Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) - SFPublisherOpenAISource typecompany job postingSource 9Forward Deployed Software Engineer - NYCPublisherOpenAISource typecompany job postingSource 10Forward Deployed Engineer - London (Spanish-speaking)PublisherOpenAISource typecompany job posting context switching, less depth in one codebase.

As a fill-in:

At [company], [a named person or team] had [their problem, in their words]. I [what you built, with one builder’s detail]. What I learned was [one sentence]. In an FDE role that is the job, not the side project, and I want it enough to accept [the cost].

No customer-facing title? You don’t need one. Mehr’s Ramp blog post says previous customer-facing experience helps but “it’s actually not necessary”, and that folks who have been instructors or teaching assistants, and actually enjoyed it, “have the ability and interest to do this well”. Source 6Forward Deployed Engineering (Leo Mehr, Director, Engineering)PublisherRamp Builders (engineering blog)Source typecompany blog In our view, an internal finance, support or operations team counts as a customer too, as long as you sat with them yourself.

Match the link to the kind of FDE role. At an AI lab or AI product company, if the posting talks about customers building on a model or an API, link to the moment you got something working in a customer’s hands despite messy inputs. At an enterprise software or data company, if the posting talks about the customer’s data and systems, link to the moment you mapped how someone’s data actually flows. Same story, different last sentence. Using the broker story from the rewrite below, the AI lab version:

“Your posting is about getting customers from a prototype on your API to production. The fax fix was exactly that gap, and I want it to be the job.”

The enterprise and data version:

“Your posting talks about integrating the customer’s data into one model of their operations. Most of my two days on the broker’s floor was tracing where each field came from.”

When the next question is “why this company?”, the post on answering ‘why Anthropic?’ shows the company-specific version of the same method.

New grad? Build it on a TA role or an internship moment. An invented example, in three sentences:

“As a TA for our databases course, I rewrote the lab setup after watching forty students hit the same install error in office hours. I liked that more than any assignment: seeing the problem in front of me, then fixing it that week. An FDE role is that loop with real customers.”

Picking and shaping the moment is what the free lesson on the bridge story and the short ‘why FDE’ answer is for. Still unsure which job you want? The lesson on how FDE differs from adjacent roles helps you decide first.

The follow-ups, and how to answer each

Keep the first answer short: the follow-ups are where it gets tested. For an OpenAI Forward Deployed Software Engineer role, one candidate reported, in February 2025, that the recruiter asked whether they had customer-facing experience, whether they knew or had used OpenAI’s APIs, and about their language preferences. Source 11OpenAI Forward Deployed Software Engineer (comment by u/aksss123)PublisherReddit r/leetcodeSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 12OpenAI Forward Deployed Software Engineer (comment by u/aksss123)PublisherReddit r/leetcodeSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 13OpenAI Forward Deployed Software Engineer (comment by u/aksss123)PublisherReddit r/leetcodeSource typecandidate report on Reddit That is one report, not a script, but the questions about customers and APIs ask for evidence, not enthusiasm, which is why the answer below leads with something you did. For the rest of that call, see what the FDE recruiter screen asks. The sample words below come from the fictional engineer in the rewrite further down, who fixed a broker’s document intake.

“When did you last do that?”

This tests whether your reason has evidence. Point back to your moment and add one fact you left out: “That was the broker project. The part I didn’t mention is that I was on their floor for two days before I wrote any code.”

“Why not a software engineering or product engineering role?”

This tests whether the reason is specific to FDE. Concede the premise, then name the difference in the unit of work: “Product engineers talk to users too, and I did, every sprint. Then I built one thing for all of them and judged it by an aggregate metric. The broker’s problem would never have made our roadmap. It was one customer’s documents and one customer’s process, and fixing it was the work I did best.” The practice question on why FDE and not software engineering drills exactly this push.

“What customer-facing experience do you have?”

This tests whether “closer to customers” is lived or hoped. Give a second moment if you have one, so the interviewer hears a pattern, and name the person, not “stakeholders”: “Before the broker, I ran calls every two weeks with the claims team at our second-largest customer for six months. Their lead, Dana, is the reason we added bulk re-extraction.” The question page on customer-facing experience has the follow-ups that come after it, such as whether that customer would take your call today.

“Have you used our product or API?”

If you have, say what you built and one thing that surprised you: “Yes. I built a small script on the API to classify our support tickets, and was surprised how much the output format changed with one line of the prompt.” If you haven’t, say so, and build something small before the next round. Don’t bluff: the next question will be about what you claimed.

“What will you give up?”

This tests whether you know the job. Name one real loss, such as knowing one codebase well enough to change anything in it without fear, and say why you accept it. “Nothing” fails, and so does a loss that is really a complaint about your current team.

“What kind of problem excites you most?”

Mehr described this question as one way Ramp decides between FDE and other engineering roles. Source 4What is a Forward Deployed Engineer? (FDE Explained) feat. Leo Mehr of Ramp (YouTube auto-generated English captions)PublisherdearCC (Clara Shih), YouTubeSource typerecorded talk or interview Answer with a kind of problem, not a technology: “messy, one-customer problems where the fix is half code and half understanding how they work.” Then give the example. The Pro question on what excites you has a full framework and scripted follow-ups.

A rewrite, start to finish

Here is one fictional engineer, invented to show the structure. Their first draft:

“I really like working with customers, and I like writing code. FDE is where AI is heading, and I want to be closer to the business side.”

That is all three weak answers in one breath. Here is the rewrite, built on something they did:

I’m a backend engineer on a document-extraction product for insurance brokers. Last spring, the operations lead at a large broker said the extraction “just doesn’t work”, and I was asked to retrain the model. I spent two days with her team first. The model was fine: their faxes were scanned sideways, and low-confidence fields went into their system unchecked. I added orientation detection and a review queue for low-confidence fields, so her team checked a handful of fields instead of retyping whole forms. They stopped double-keying within the month.

What I learned is that I do my best work when I can see the customer’s process, not just their ticket. Your posting talks about owning deployments from integration to adoption; I want that to be the job. I know the cost: travel, other people’s systems, and less depth in one codebase.

Then the follow-up, answered from the same story:

Interviewer: Which part of the engineering do you expect someone else to do?

Candidate: None of the part that touches the customer. I wrote the orientation step and the review queue myself, and I was on call for them the week they shipped. I’d lean on the model team for the model, the way I did then, because retraining wasn’t the fix.

Why this version survives:

  • Every follow-up has somewhere to go: back to the broker, the faxes and the review queue.
  • It names what an FDE role gives that a product role does not.
  • It accepts a cost, which shows the candidate knows the job.
  • No other candidate could say it, and that is the point.

Practice it out loud

One rehearsal round

  • Write the three parts, one line each: the moment, what it taught you, the link to this posting.
  • Say it aloud and time it. If it runs past a minute, cut the setup, never the builder’s detail.
  • Have a friend ask the six follow-ups above in random order. Answer each without notes, and go back to your story every time.
  • Check each sentence: could any other candidate say it? If yes, replace it with something from your own work.
  • Rewrite only the last sentence for each company you are interviewing with.

The practice question on “why FDE, not SWE” is free, and comes with scripted follow-ups: why not product engineering, what you will miss from building one product in depth, and how travel fits your life.

“Why FDE?” can also close your first minute, so pair it with our post on ‘tell me about yourself’ for FDE interviews. Then open the why-FDE practice question, answer it aloud, and check your answer against the illustrative one.

GlossaryForward deployed engineerA software engineer who builds and ships production systems inside a customer’s problem and environment, accountable to that customer’s outcome.More on Forward deployed engineerGlossaryForward deployed software engineerPalantir’s title for its FDE role, called Delta internally; OpenAI and EY also post FDSE titles, each with its own duties.More on Forward deployed software engineerGlossaryEmbeddingA vector representation of text or other data used to measure similarity of meaning.More on Embedding

Questions people ask

What is a good answer to ‘why FDE?’

One that rests on something you did: a time you worked close to the people using your software, what you learned from it, and why you want more of that work. Then connect it to what the posting asks for, in your own words.

Why do interviewers ask ‘why FDE?’

At least one employer says it uses the answer to place candidates: Ramp’s Director of Engineering has said that asking candidates what they are excited about is one way Ramp decides whether someone suits FDE or another engineering role.Source 4What is a Forward Deployed Engineer? (FDE Explained) feat. Leo Mehr of Ramp (YouTube auto-generated English captions)PublisherdearCC (Clara Shih), YouTubeSource typerecorded talk or interview

Should I say I want to be closer to customers?

Yes, if it is true and you can back it with an example. Ramp’s Director of Engineering has said that engineers who want to be closer to customers or users are a great predictor of FDE fit. Expect the follow-up to ask when you last did that, and have the story ready.Source 4What is a Forward Deployed Engineer? (FDE Explained) feat. Leo Mehr of Ramp (YouTube auto-generated English captions)PublisherdearCC (Clara Shih), YouTubeSource typerecorded talk or interview

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